


252. caged hopes

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [223]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 21:06:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9625364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Girl-next-door is a quick learner; it took Helena a while to figure out how to move things without touching them. Mostly what she is good at isfeeling. Helena canfeelthat girl-next-door is still-next-door, and she’s scared, and she used too much of her brain and now she’s hurting. Helena canfeelthat one of the guards is dead.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: abuse]

The girl in the cell next to Helena tries to break out once a week.

At least, she thinks it’s a week. She doesn’t know. She knows there used to be things like weeks, and days, and also things like months, but that was a while ago. Down here in this world of white hallways and white clean cells time doesn’t matter. Time is only measured in food. Here a tray, there a tray. Here, time for needles.

Here again: the girl in the cell next to Helena, screaming. Guards hurling across the white hallway with no one touching them. Girl-next-door is a quick learner; it took Helena a while to figure out how to move things without touching them. Mostly what she is good at is _feeling_. Helena can _feel_ that girl-next-door is still-next-door, and she’s scared, and she used too much of her brain and now she’s hurting. Helena can _feel_ that one of the guards is dead.

An alarm goes off. More guards come running down the white hallway. Helena stops listening. Today they gave her a plastic container of peaches, thick in syrup. They taste good. If she focuses very hard on the food, she doesn’t have to feel them hitting the girl in the cell next door.

 

She feels it anyways.

 

After the guards are gone, and all that’s left is the seashell-echo of girl-next-door’s pain and sadness and loneliness (and surely once there were things like seashells, surely there had to have been), Helena focuses very hard and lifts the half-empty container of peaches up – and through her cell window – and through the girl-next-door’s cell window – and to the ground. She can _feel_ : shock, distrust, delight, anger. The cells are too far away for them to speak to each other, so Helena has to take that as a thank-you.

(She does.)

* * *

Four meals later, they take Helena out so they can put the wire helmet on her brain and watch lines wiggling on a chart. Helena always goes nicely. They give Helena fruit, if she goes nicely. This time she goes very nicely until they pass the cell next door, and then she lifts herself up very fast. It’s like flying – only she can’t control it. She holds herself in the air and looks through the window framed in the door.

In the bed (white bed) in the cell (white cell) the girl-next-door lifts her head up and looks at Helena. She’s Helena’s age. She has brown hair. There’s a bruise on her face from where the guards hit her. Helena folds all of her joy into a ball and throws it at the girl-next-door-with-brown-hair. Helena can _feel_ the second that she catches it. They both smile at each other through the window until the guards yank Helena back down.

It only takes a few seconds. Helena keeps going nicely, all the way down the white hallway – she thinks it’s maybe too late for that now, no peaches for dinner, but it was worth it.

She makes it a few more steps down the hallway before happiness explodes in her brain. It’s not her happiness. Along with that happiness is the _feeling_ of the word _Sarah_. Sarah. That must be her name.

She can’t _feel_ Sarah anymore. Too far. Helena wraps her own name up safe inside her brain and holds onto it, just in case.

* * *

Six meals after that they’re friends. Four meals after that Sarah tries to get Helena to leave with her. She doesn’t say it in words, but Helena can _feel_ Sarah’s irritation itching restless down her spine. Maybe Sarah could make it if Helena helped. Maybe they would be put in cells all the way down the white hallways from each other, and then they’d both be alone again. Is it worth it? Is it really?

Too late for Helena to decide, because more meals pass and Sarah is trying to break out again. They keep sending more guards to take Sarah to be tested, but she keeps killing them. More guards, she kills them. More guards, she kills them. It’s making her so tired; Helena can feel her bleeding, inside of her head.

Helena doesn’t want Sarah to die.

So.

She’d thought killing a guard would be harder, but it’s really just one solid motion – like slapping your hand against a wall, except that at the end of it someone is dead. She hits the wall a few times. The hallway is silent.

Helena can _feel_ Sarah leaving her cell, the way she’s triumphant and scared and excited all in one. The door to Helena’s cell opens.

“Hey,” says Sarah. It’s the first time Helena has ever heard her voice. “You ready to get out of here?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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